The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1887-05-12

hO11 vi q ~ A4S14OCSS O4"O Lux WIN
down to us from an ancestry whose
lives and achievements have emblaz-
oned the proudest pages of the worlds
recorded history. But | rejoice no
less that a new era is upon us-an era
in which Drawn is no longer king upon
the farm-an era in which the thrift
less habit of cutting down u forests
and wearing out our fields, to be fol-
lowed by cutting down yet other forests
and wearing out yet other fields, by
and through the brute force of the
slave, thus degrading labor, has passed
away forever, giving place to rational
methods and business principles, in
retaining these same forests and
fields, under the guidance of intelli-
gence and science, thus dignifying and
enrolling human labor. That our
Southern country, with it's changed
conditions, requires farming to be
conducted more as a business than
has hitherto been done, is evidenced
in the demand for men educated in
the science and practice of agriculture.
This demand is steadily growing. And
though uncomplimentary remarks
have been made at the expense Of
"book-farming," still the experience
of the old countries, from Egypt to
England, shows beyond a peradven-
ture, that, as the land is more and
more densely populated, and men are,
therefore, obliged to make a liveli-
hood from smaller and smaller areas,
scientific knowledge must be more
and more combined with business
methods and sound practical sense.
Even if there should be little demand
for scientific methods and business
principles applied to farming now, and
I do not SO conceed, this state of affairs
cannot continue many years. Boys,
now in college, will, before they reach
middle life, be moving among a hun
dred millions American freemen with
in the limits Of this great republic.
Long ere that day shall arrive the
public domain now opened to home
steads, the condition Of things now
prevailing in agriculture must be
revolutionized. The system of routine
cultivation practiced by our fathers
and which still obtains to a greater or
less extent in some sections, must
cease. The habit of improvidently
impoverishing land, and then moving
away to other lands mor productive,
with the purpose of impoverishing and
moving away from them in turn, can
not continue. Men will be compelled
to get a livelihood upon less and less
land, and they can do this only by
bringing to bear upon the soil i'm
proved methods and more highly
skilled business tact. AT what period
we shall reach the present crowded
condition of populous Europe, I may
not predict ; but the steady and con
slant approximation to it is as newt
able as the rolling years. Already,
indeed, the exhausted condition of the
soil in many States, including our
own, demands the aid Of science and
there are not wanting instances in
North Carolina to show that on the
best of land, any farmer, with an in
telligent and practical knowledge of
agriculture, can apply scientific prin-
ciples with the happiest results.
Touching the value and Importance
of education in connection with agri-
culture, in building up the business of
farming, or farming as a business, it
would be passing strange, indeed, if
this vast field Of human operation
we're the only n to which the appli-
cation of science and business maxims
would be utterly useless-the only one
in which the enlarged powers of study
and observation are of no avail. OF
all propositions, this would be the
most fearful Indictment against the
most extended field of human thought
and work, for it would make agricul-
ture at once the most general and the
most necessary pursuit, the only one
unworthy of a human being. But it
is not true. The history Of agricul-
ture, from it's earliest beginning, proves
the reverse of this. A perusal of Her
bert Spencer's tables in sociology
shows that, from it's rudest inceptions,
observation and reasoning upon OBJ
servation have been steadily improv-
ing agriculture, at the same time that
they have improved other industries.
These tables are corroborated by the
history of agriculture in every age of
the world and under every phase of
human society. In the beginning the